Whether you’re ‘childless’ or ‘childfree’, you shouldn't have to talk about it | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

‘Do you mind either way?’ The woman behind the till has scanned my box of Colgate and bottle of nit shampoo, but her hand pauses over the pregnancy test. My eyes flick quickly up to hers. I have four children already; asking me if I mind, as I buy a test that will seal my fate, feels way too intimate. What if I had been a different person, in diffe

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There’s a reason I associated the forums with conservative types. It’s not particularly popular (or easy) to frame parenthood as aspirational when you hold the concerns of the left. At least not in my world. Sure, you can have kids as a leftist, but the primary conversations surrounding parenthood that I participated in concerned its problems: the

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“Whenever I read that sort of thing, or every time an exhausted colleague complains to me—and of course this is between you and me—I’m shocked by how shallow and selfish they are. Really. You can see it coming, too. It’s just like, you wanted this, you did this. How can you complain about it now? It’s not like I don’t understand. It’s a long time,

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